“The opportunity of choice available from technologies has been exploding, offering customers more innovation, greater functionality and substantially more agility at a lower overall price point,” Schneider said during the July 15 webinar, “Prepare for the Digital Transformation Future.”

“So I think,” Schneider said, “the culmination of those two market forces are creating an opportunity and they're creating a shift, which we already see right now, which is toward digital transformation.”

‘Digital DNA’

The digital landscape has metamorphosed, Schneider said, from the land of possibility to land of enablement.

“Customers, analysts, consulting agencies and technology (leaders) are now focused less on what's possible,” he added, “and more on enabling what's possible through implementation, integration, usage and comprehensive marketing ideas, strategies and technologies.”

It’s led to even stiffer competition in the digital landscape as businesses have become more competitive and global markets have opened up, according to Andy Iddon, co-founder of Building Blocks, a Manchester, England-based digital experience agency that helps organizations identify digital opportunities and put them into practice.

Iddon, Schneider’s co-speaker during the CMSWire webinar, said enterprises are adapting to deal with a new competitive global business and a changing customer environment.

When enterprises transform digitally, they must understand the gaps in people, processes and platforms and what their value proposition needs to be, he said.

Iddon noted enterprises are dealing with a “new digital DNA,” one delivers a new way of working, new processes, “along with an enabling platform that helps you leverage what you have and enable you to integrate what you need.”

Getting There

So how do enterprises complete a successful digital transformation?

Change the way they operate but also measure that transition. It is not a project that can be sidelined.

“It is continuous and you need to continue to review and optimize, because digital transformation creates a new way of working,” Iddon said. “To be successful your business must commit to change or flounder.”

He called digital transformation a “foundational change” where enterprises implement new operating models, revise their customer value proposition, reconfigure infrastructure and adopt a new company culture.

“As well as both people and process, digital transformation relies on the adoption and seamless integration of technology,” Iddon said.

“Businesses should expect to gain competitive advantages with the increased use of automation and the streamlining of business processes to increase both productivity and efficiency. We hope that would then facilitate new revenue models and allow you to differentiate yourselves in the market.”

“... We need to be consistent in service and message,” he said. “… We have different personas and those personas have different needs. We have different devices to look at what we can offer them. We need to ensure that we offer them a relevant experience.”

Customer Journey Insight

Customer journeys give you a roadmap of where the touchpoints are for interactions with you as an enterprise and for your customer.

Know how your different applications and content sources and assets are actually delivered to the customers.

Content and data is pervasive and “persists throughout.”

“It has to be effectively managed,” Schneider said. “These are your strategic assets that you as a business are utilizing to effectively communicate with your customers.”

You must also realize no one technology can do it all.

“There is not a digital transformation technology, a single solution that can do everything for you,” Schneider added.

“And in fact there's lots of statistics and lots of reasons why customers choose different technologies but certainly within an enterprise there are multiple technologies that need to communicate together. They not only need to be able to create content, but also manage different aspects of that content transformation and delivery process.”

Integration and the ability for the technologies to talk to each other within this digital transformation strategy is “clearly a priority for the platform improvement process.”

Corporate Content Cloud

E-Spirit’s new digital initiative -- the Corporate Content Cloud -- is designed to help organizations navigate the digital transformation terrain. It underscores how content drives digital transformation, e-Spirit officials said. It provides enterprises with a consistent and complementary experience across all channels and devices by connecting all of the people, internal and external data sources, best-of breed technologies and proprietary systems involved in the process.

“Through a single solution we can effectively provide you with the vehicle to integrate all pieces together, to connect people, systems and applications into a single universal technology suite that can be presented as the digital marketing platform, not only for internal needs but also for external needs,” Schneider said.

The Corporate Content Cloud platform allows enterprises access to real time data assets and information and the ability to publish information from a single technology platform “with content that's totally accurate and relevant across all channels and devices.”

“And then as a result,” Schneider added, “to engage customers in this digital customer experience at every touchpoint along the customer journey.”

“We believe in best-of-breed,” Schneider said. “We acknowledge that most customers have a best-of-breed and have technologies in their enterprise that not only provide critical business functionality, but also have a necessary component or are a necessary component of a digital transformation strategy.”

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